NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

Copyright © 2006 by Nigel Beale

2006 Man Booker Prize longlist of 19 books was chosen from 112 entries; 95 submitted, 17 called in by the judges (Which? Pray tell).

“Judging the Man Booker Prize [said Chair Hermione Lee] puts you through almost as many emotions as there are in the novels. We’ve tried to be careful and critical judges as well as being passionately involved. We have many regrets about some of the novels we’ve left off, and we could easily have had a longlist of about 30 books, but we’re delighted with the variety, the originality, the drama and craft, the human interest and the strong voices in this longlist. It’s a list in which famous established novelists rub shoulders with little known newcomers. We hope that people will leap at it for their late summer reading and make up their own shortlist.â€?

The judging panel for the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: Hermione Lee (Chair); Simon Armitage, poet and novelist; Candia McWilliam, award winning novelist; critic Anthony Quinn and actor Fiona Shaw. Shortlist will be announced 14th September. The winner on 10th October.

Carey, Peter Theft: A Love Story (Faber & Faber)
Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton)
Edric, Robert Gathering the Water (Doubleday)
Gordimer, Nadine Get a Life (Bloomsbury)
Grenville, Kate The Secret River (Canongate)
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down (Canongate)
Jacobson, Howard Kalooki Nights (Jonathan Cape)
Lasdun, James Seven Lies (Jonathan Cape)
Lawson, Mary The Other Side of the Bridge (Chatto & Windus)
McGregor, Jon So Many Ways to Begin (Bloomsbury)
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men (Viking)
Messud, Claire The Emperor’s Children (Picador)
Mitchell, David Black Swan Green (Sceptre)
Murr, Naeem The Perfect Man (William Heinemann)
O’Hagan, Andrew Be Near Me (Faber & Faber)
Robertson, James The Testament of Gideon Mack (Hamish Hamilton)
St Aubyn, Edward Mother’s Milk (Picador)
Unsworth, Barry The Ruby in her Navel (Hamish Hamilton)
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch (Virago)

How on earth can our judges read all these books without jumbling them all together, without doing an injustice to each. Did they have to read all 112?

Listen to my interview here with Tim Parks on what bollocks prizes can be.

Wonderful photo from here

The full front page of the Toronto Globe and Mail’s August 12 Review section, and half a one inside for good measure, are devoted to saying pretty well nothing. Nice big picture of Monica Ali, which got me reading…then emptiness about activists in the East London Bangladeshi neighbourhood of Brick Lane halting the filming of her award winning novel of the same name. Apparently they disapprove of an affair one of the characters has in it. Germaine Greer reportedly supports the protestors, and Salman Rushdie is arguing with her, although we aren’t given any substantive details.

No, the piece just prattles about the newly hybridized/not entirely integrated world we live in, and the all community ‘representation and authenticity’ questions that Asian/hyphenated British writers face these days.

Nothing about why these new novelists are attracting attention, what makes them good or interesting, or even what causes the objections these communities raise. Nope. Just shallow white noise…latte froth you’d expect to find in the Style section of the National Post maybe, but not here…

Who gives a shit where these authors come from and how ‘their people’ feel about them. Why waste my time writing about it. An author is either good or bad, period. All the rest, at least in this article, is fatuous drivel.

Many more like this…written, I assume, for the same ‘demographic’ that the CBC’s vacuous new programming seems directed at, and I’ll abandon the paper all together.

Here’s the latest poster promoting The Biblio File Radio Program. Thanks to John MacDonald for photoshopping me into position, Richard Fitzpatrick for the original image, and all the lovely people in Ottawa with postable places that have kindly consented to display it.

Speaking of searching: Saw In Search of Mozart last night, and was struck by the parallels between Wolfgang and William (Shakespeare). Both geniuses acclaimed for their abilities to honestly depict the full extent of human experience and to accurately express the heights and depths of emotion/joy/tragedy.

Both too successful entrepreneurs (Mozart didn’t die a pauper) whose livelihoods depended upon appealing to audiences (which may explain the greatness of their work, see Philip Larkin post; and notice how this contradicts my Dan-Brown-is-mediocre assertion in previous) who were able to produce brilliant entertainment on demand, and thrill different audiences on multiple levels in the same productions. In short, both knew what was popular and used it, but also, without straying too far off the scale and alienating paying customers, introduced and interwove exciting new experimental layers of complexity that delighted everyone save their rivals.

Image from here

Last fall Henry Holt & Company paid an $800,000 advance (for North American rights) to law professor and a first-time novelist Jed Rubenfeld, for “The Interpretation of Murder,â€? in hopes of packaging up the next Da Vinci Code. Holt was evidently attraced to the book because of it’s Brown-like combining of lite entertainment and erudition. It’s filled with references to Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex and contains an in depth analysis of the “To be or not to beâ€? soliloquy in “Hamlet.â€? The company is spending $500,000 to market the novel. So far it has printed 185,000 copies for release on Sept. 5.

“Although serendipity obviously plays a part in helping a book capture the public imagination, marketing and hype play a crucial role,” says an article in the New York Times, “The readers are not going to come to a book just because it is good,â€? said John Sterling, Holt’s president and publisher. “You really have to make a book.â€?

Who says The Da Vinci Code is any good? Aside from jillions of readers…I know. Still, savvy publishers trying to make an honest buck are probably better off starting out with something mediocre.

Photo from here

Here’s Henry Kissinger on Charlie Rose talking about how to move out of the current Middle East crisis, and his hard line against Nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea.

Photo from here

Just in case you are interested: “The Canadian Children’s Book Centre (CCBC) is a national, not-for-profit organization and registered charity founded in 1976 to promote, support and encourage the reading, writing and illustrating of Canadian books for children and teens. With book collections and extensive resources in five cities across Canada, the CCBC is a treasure-trove for anyone interested in Canadian books for young readers.”

In case you like your reality read through fictional glasses, try The Last Days of Publishing: A Novel, by Tom Engelhardt.

Fun article here on hyperbolic dust jacket blurbs by Andre Mayer. Universally adulatory blurbs are; as such they can’t help but raise reader expectations. Much safer to under promise and over deliver if you ask me. Stick to clipped reviews by respected third parties, avoid flatulance from friendly fellow authors.

Like William S. Burroughs for example

Just as, in the case of film, a short, postive descriptive from the NY Times goes way further than anything from that indescriminate fartcatcher Roger Ebert and his latest thumb thrusting buddy ever could.

Image from here